‘Who is this woman?’: Stars’ infamous chat show clash

Miriam Margolyes has spoken out about one of her most infamous chat-show run-ins, naming the other party as a celeb she really dislikes.

Always outspoken actor Miriam Margolyes has blasted yet another celebrity – this time, a fellow guest during one of her viral TV chat show appearances.

Margolyes appeared as a guest at the recent Hay Festival in the UK where she was interviewed by author Philippe Sands who asked her about celebrities she dislikes.

Margolyes named singer Lily Allen, who sat next to her on the sofa during a 2014 appearance on The Graham Norton Show.

“She thought when she was on the program that it was all about her,” Margolyes claimed, as per the Daily Mail.

“She thought: ‘Who is this woman? Miriam who?’ She wasn’t friendly and I didn’t like that and so I showed my dislike, which wasn’t very nice of me because she was much younger than me and I should have just taught her how to behave.”

Host Graham Norton tried to keep the show on the rails …

But Miriam didn’t hold back about her fellow guests.

Margolyes’ appearance on the chat show made headlines at the time when she confessed she had little to no knowledge of her fellow guests, Allen and actor Dominic Cooper.

Host Graham Norton attempted to jog her memory, asking if she’d seen Cooper’s recent hit film Mamma Mia.

“That was a dreadful film,” she announced while Cooper sat right beside her. “Did you think that was a good film?”

Then, attempting diplomacy, she said that it was “a very popular film … with people.”

Norton then suggested that surely Margolyes would know of Allen, who at that point had been one of the UK’s biggest pop stars for almost a decade.

Lily Allen and Dominic Cooper listen on as Margolyes explains she doesn’t know who they are.

“Darling, I’m 72, I don’t know about songs or singing. But I know you’re highly admired, I do know that,” she told a laughing Allen.

“Unlike Dominic, I guess?” quipped Norton.

Now 83, Marolyes has in recent years had no hesitation in sharing some of her uncomfortable experiences with fellow celebrities.

In her 2023 memoir Oh Miriam! she detailed the “vile experience” she had acting alongside Steve Martin in the 1986 film, Little Shop of Horrors.

She claimed in the book that she was “hit all day by doors opening in my face” and “repeatedly punched, slapped and knocked down” by Martin as they tried to perfect a scene in the film.

That face when someone asks you if you enjoyed Mamma Mia.

“He (Steve Martin) was incredibly unfriendly, because he was a perfectionist,” Margolyes later told news.com.au.

“He was an artist and all he was interested in was getting the comic moment right, and he was correct to do that, but he should have included me.”

But Martin hit back, releasing a statement calling her account of their time together “pejorative” and insisting that “my memory is that we had a good communication as professional actors.”

In another wild interview with news.com.au back in 2022, Margolyes named and shamed action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger, alleging he was a nightmare to work with during their 1999 film End of Days.

“He was actually quite rude. He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course I do – but I don’t fart in people’s faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face,” she claimed.